With the new year a few hours away, there's no better time to hold a game jam and that is just what organizer Richard Blechinger of the New Year Game Jam has planned. The second annual New Year Game Jam kicks off at 12 AM Dec 31. The only rule to the event is that games have to be made in 48 hours between 12 AM on December 31st and 12 AM on January 2nd (in your particular time zone).

Last year saw only 28 submissions, so hopefully this year's event will attract a little more attention and produce some interesting indie games that everyone can enjoy.

Recently the "Take This Project" was quietly relaunched as "Take This," along with a new website at www.takethis.org. Take This is a support group for gamers (though it doesn't specifically exclude those people who do not identify themselves as gamers), games journalists, game developers, and other industry professionals that suffer from depression, anxiety and other challenges associated with mental illness.

A 12-year-old who just happened to be up all night playing video games in Danville, Kentucky, is being credited with saving his entire family. On Thursday morning at around 3:30 am, Jaxxyn Wood was on the first floor of his family home playing video games when he smelled something funny in the air. Jaxxyn said that he "smelled something really bad, like Legos on fire."

Upon further investigation he noticed that the ice machine in the kitchen was on fire.

The IndieGoGo campaign for Operation Ninja S.T.A.R. has managed to raise $2,547 of its $17,500 goal, with 26 more days to go. Launched last week, Operation Ninja S.T.A.R. seeks to raise funds to closely examine a patent owned by Treehouse Avatar Technologies to see if there is any evidence that the invention existed prior to the patent application. Their ultimate goal is to render the patent invalid.

After only a day of being live, a Kickstarter campaign for a Mega Man Board game has managed to get fully funded. The board game, which secured an official license from Capcom, has raised $167,796 from 1,369 backers - well over its initial goal of $70,000. The campaign has 37 more days left, so expect a lot of stretch goals to be added.

Texas-based board game company Jasco Games initially ran the Kickstarter to make the board game a lot better:

MidBoss Games has managed to get its point-and-click adventure game Read Only Memories fully funded via Kickstarter. The crowdfunding campaign ended yesterday, raising $64,378 from 1,790 by the time it closed. The developers were originally seeking $62,064. Details on how you can still pledge (via PayPal - until the end of this year) can be found on the game's Kickstarter page.

Inspired by the software patent trolling efforts of patent house Treehouse Avatar Technologies, a new IndieGoGo campaign launched today seeks to raise funds for a project that will ultimately help the little guy. The project is called Operation Ninja S.T.A.R., and seeks to raise $17,500 to closely examine a patent owned by Treehouse Avatar Technologies to see if there is any evidence that the invention existed prior to the patent application. Their ultimate goal is to render the patent invalid.

Maximum PC offers an interesting report on a new program from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that uses video games. The government agency’s Crowd Sourced Formal Verification (CSFV) program hopes to crowdsource formal verification (testing that aims to ensure that software is bug-free and isn’t vulnerable to attack or misuse) with "purpose-built games" called Verigames.

Kotaku offers a mildly amusing story about a game development studio that decided to pirate their own game. Vitali Kirpu and Alex Poysky, the developers behind Pixel Piracy, have "pirated" a copy of their own game, and provided a free torrent download on their site.

Extend Studios has teamed up with American McGee’s Spicy Horse for new backers-only reward tier related to the Kickstarter for its puzzle-platforming game So Many Me. By paying for any pledge level of $10 or more, backers can get the Spicy Horse Costume Pack.

Dyscourse, the new psychological survival adventure game from Owlchemy Labs (Snuggle Truck, Jack Lumber) currently attempting to raise funds through Kickstarter, will ship with an additional bonus scenario called "Indie Plane Crash," containing cameos by ten famous independent game developers.

A new treatment for patients who suffer from schizophrenia is being developed and field tested by University College London. According to Julian Leff, the University College London psychiatrist who developed the program, the treatment puts a face on the destructive and negative voices that schizophrenia patients sometimes hear and allows them the opportunity to confront that personality.

RuneScape makers Jagex say that the recent introduction of RuneScape Bonds into the long-running MMO has reduced gold farming activities by as much as 81 percent. Bonds were introduced into the game on September 26. A Bond in RuneScape cost $5, £3 or €4.25 each and can only be redeemed in-game. Bonds are redeemable for 14 days of RuneScape membership, eight Squeal of Fortune spins, or 160 RuneCoins. Multiple Bonds can also be redeemed for RuneFest tickets (RuneFest is a fan gathering that will take place at the Tobacco Dock in London on November 2).

GlassLab, a collaboration between Institute of Play, Electronic Arts, the ESA and others, strives to improve education through the use of digital games. The lab's first game, SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge!,will be integrated into select U.S. school ciriculums next month.

Munich, Germany-based game designer Kira Resari is working on an interactive video game that puts players in the shoes of Anne Frank, with the hopes of memorializing the Holocaust for the millennial generation. The 25-year-old designer recently told a German media outlet that "younger generations need access to history on their own wavelength."

Chris Roberts and his company Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) have announced details on a design contest for fans of Star Citizen that could net budding designers a cool $30,000. The modding competition, The Next Great Starship, calls for teams to design, model and rig a spaceship that will be integrated into Chris Roberts' upcoming space simulation game. Teams of up to three people are eligible to enter the competition which carries a grand prize of $30,000. Sponsors for the competition include Alienware, AMD, Autodesk, Crytek, Cologne Game Lab, Wacom and YouTube.

Surgeons at Florida Hospital Celebration Health in Kissimmee, Florida spend six minutes playing Super Monkey Ball on the Gamecube prior to conducting surgery because it makes them less likely to make mistakes. The Orlando Sentinel highlights the game-playing surgeons in a recent article and explains why it is important for giving patients better care and a safer experience when undergoing surgery.

Gorilla Press Games has launched a crowd-funding campaign for Legend of Lancer, a game it describes as a "2D Metroidvania" for PC, Mac, and Linux that focuses on the art of jousting. Inspired by the writing of J.R.R Tolkien, Miguel de Cervantes, George R.R. Martin, and T.H. White, Legend of the Lancer is a 2D action-adventure game that focuses on the balance between telling an interesting story and providing players with compelling gameplay.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) issued a lengthy statement today noting that it is time that games involving war start including the actual laws of war. The IRCC says that this could be done without interfering with the fun that millions of players have playing first-person shooters.

The next few days will either make or break the crowd funding ambitions of Matt Gilgenbach's Neverending Nightmares, a "terrifying psychological horror game inspired by the developer's battle with mental illness." The Kickstarter campaign for the game, to be released simultaneously on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Ouya in August of next year (assuming that it meets its funding goal) is within striking distance of being successful. With only 58 hours to go, Neverending Nightmares has managed to raise $69,437 of its $99,000 goal from 2,564 backers.

According to Nintendo's manager of business development Dan Adelman, over one-thousand indie developers have expressed interest in developing for the Wii U. During the Game Developers Conference in March of this year, Nintendo launched a new Wii U developer website (wiiu-developers.nintendo.com) that allowed smaller, independent studios to register their interest in making games for Wii U. Adelman revealed the numbers during a recent interview with GameSpot.

Game Dev Tycoon is coming to Steam on August 29, according to independent game development studio Greenheart Games. The game allows players to create a video game start-up company in the 1980's and make it a successful enterprise by developing cutting edge video games. Players will have to design games, research new technologies, build custom game engines, manage office space, build out their development teams, and avoid pitfalls like piracy.

Earlier this year Mojang co-founder and Minecraft creator Marcus "Notch" Persson said that he was having a creative block and that he would put his pet project, 0x10c, on hold. The game has remained on hold since that time, and during a recent Team Fortress 2 live stream on Twitch, Persson revealed that he has all but given up on developing the space-themed game inspired by Minecraft's aesthetics.

Seth and Timothy Peterson have come up with an interesting business idea for California: an arcade game rental service that charges a monthly fee to get classic arcade game cabinets in the hands of classic arcade gaming aficionados. The San Francisco-based company is called "All You Can Arcade," and lets customers rent such arcade classics as Tron, Ms. Pac Man, and Donkey Kong for $75 a month. The brothers launched the service last month.

While a majority of the stories about Google Glass are about privacy concerns, people being idiots with the wearable device, or some Google Glass wearer getting banned from a business because it creeps everyone around them out, it can be used for pursuits many of us are interested in - like gaming.

Way back in February we reported on the opening of the Sandy Hook Arcade Center, an arcade founded by Andrew Clure and Scott Cicciari, two long-time Newtown residents, who wanted to share their love of pinball with the community in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that resulted in the deaths of 20 children and six adult staff members.

NIS America has added some new characters to its educational iOS puzzle game, Character Chowdown. The in-game content, which will cost you roughly $0.99 a pop, includes characters from the popular Disgaea series such as Laharl, Prinny, Mao, and Flonne. Other downloadable content includes the Hiragana pack and seven different Kanji packs.

GameStop is taking everybody for a ride with the pre-owned games market, according to Ready at Dawn Studios boss Ru Weerasuriya. And by everybody he means developers and publishers. Speaking to GII, the head of the studio for God of War: Chains of Olympus and upcoming game The Order: 1886, thinks retailers like GameStop are making "a living at the expense of everybody else."

Internet activist Aaron Swartz has been posthumously inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame, according to the BBC. Swartz committed suicide in January of this year in his New York City apartment. He was 26 years old. He helped build internet institutions like Reddit and Creative Commons, co-authored the very first RSS specification and was an internet activist through his work as the founder of Demand Progress.

Michael Newman and his Los Angeles-based interactive development and product design company Pomp Productions has created an interesting game called Video Game Sans Video. Recently shown off at the 2013 Maker Faire, and highlighted by Discovery, Video Game Sans Video is a clever contraption that lets players navigate a space ship in four directions (up, down, forward and back).

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ZippyDSMlee: .....win8 hates any left over hidden install partitions from other version of windows....only waste 5 hours finding that out...its ahrder than you think keeping up with 4 or 5 HDDS......03/03/2015 - 4:44am

Matthew Wilson: I am going to pax east, any games you guys want me to check out?03/02/2015 - 11:23pm

ZippyDSMlee: No one remembers the days of Cinemagic and Cynergy eh? :P, meh even MGS is getting to film like....03/02/2015 - 8:44pm

MechaTama31: I was about to get all defensive about liking Metal Gear Solid, but then I saw that he was talking about "cinematic" as a euphemism for "crappy framerate".03/02/2015 - 8:29pm

prh99: Just replace cinematic with the appropriate synonym for poo and you'll have gist of any press release.03/02/2015 - 5:34pm

Monte: Though from a business side, i would agree with the article. While it would be smarter for developers to slow down, you can't expect EA, Activision or ubisoft to do something like that. Nintnedo's gotta get the third party back.02/28/2015 - 4:36pm

Monte: Though it does also help that nintendo's more colorful style is a lot less reliant on graphics than more realistic games. Wind Waker is over 10 years old and still looks good for its age.02/28/2015 - 4:33pm

Monte: With the Wii, nintnedo had the right idea. Hold back on shiny graphics and focus on the gameplay experience. Unfortunatly everyone else keeps pushing for newer graphics and it matters less and less each generation. I can barely notice the difference02/28/2015 - 4:29pm

Monte: ON third party developers; i kinda think they should slow down to nintendo's pace. They bemoan the rising costs of AAA gaming, but then constantly push for the best graphics which is makes up a lot of those costs. Be easier to afford if they held back02/28/2015 - 4:27pm

Matthew Wilson: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/02/28/the-world-is-nintendos-if-only-theyd-take-it/ I think this is a interesting op-ed, but yeah it kind of is stating the obvious.02/28/2015 - 2:52pm